Very new, very normal

The latest pandemic-related comeback is The Session, the monthly beer blogging jamboree that ran from 2007 until it sputtered out in 2018. Session enthusiast (in all senses) Al has resurrected it and asked how we're all getting on in the age of Covid-19 and how it has affected our beer-drinking lives.

To be honest mine hasn't changed hugely, other than missing the handful of times a week I would be in the pub, and spending much less time hunting down beers in the off licences of Dublin. It's a bit weird not to be planning a trip somewhere too, but the less said about that the better.

No longer doing the daily commute has changed one thing, though. I found myself still needing the border between work and home life that my twenty minute cycle provided without my realising it. I have filled the gap with beer, making a habit of drinking just one serving of something undemanding immediately after closing the laptop for the day. In the beginning this was Manislav, Tesco's very decent and very cheap Czech-style lager. On a subsequent supply run to Aldi I substituted Rheinbacher, though they only had bottles. I found I just didn't enjoy them as much as the canned Rheinbacher I remember. The working hypothesis is that twist-off cap: I suspect it's not as good as it needs to be to keep oxygen out. When the first six-pack ran low I staged a blind test against Manislav and was quite surprised to find bottled Rheinbacher my favourite of the pair. And so it was back to Aldi, where I was ecstatic to discover the cans were back. So that's me committed to a daily Rheinbacher for as long as this whole thing lasts.

I'm still getting ticks in, of course. It's very strange to be trying a new Porterhouse beer at home rather than in in one of their pubs, but here's two of them.

Session Pale Ale has inherited the branding palette of the late Hop Head IPA. There's a certain resemblance in the liquid too: a clear amber colour, not quite as dark as Hop Head but darker than its replacement, Yippy. A sharp grapefruit bitterness is the centre of the flavour, with a slightly soapy lemon twang after it. Belma has been used, alongside Amarillo and Centennial, but I couldn't detect its signature strawberry flavour. It's light but not thin, and after that initial jolt of bitterness there's very little follow-through. This is simple and straightforward, and perhaps a little old-fashioned with its west-coast sensibilities. The name isn't an affectation: it is very much built for the session; easy-drinking without being bland, and only €3 for the half-litre bottle. There's absolutely nothing to stop you from opening another bottle if you are so minded.

But I had another Porterhouse beer to tackle, their pandemic theme beer Stay Home, badged as an "isolation IPA". Juice is promised here, via El Dorado, Enigma and Ekuanot. It's only slightly hazy and again a dark orange colour. The aroma isn't juicy but it is sweet, with a fair whack of vanilla in there. The flavour is better: tangerine and satsuma in the foretaste, buoyed up by the big texture. It gets a little sickly in the finish -- the revenge of that vanilla effect -- but it's only 4.6% ABV so once again the finish is quick and it doesn't get cloying. It's an interesting counterpoint to the previous one: a similar strength but lacking the pointy C-hop edges. I don't know that it's better, though. I found myself craving a bitterness kick that was never part of the deal.

Yeah, pale ale is fun and all, but neither of these are candidates for my every day beer. I fully intend to surf out the crisis on a wave of Rheinbacher.